The Wake

As soon as the idea of his death had dimmed, a hand
paused inside a pumpkin, cupping the flesh, and whispered
silently to roots through the flat spines of seeds.
Oh! the red valves that were held down by soft organs, – the
murmur of the dirt accepting its pale box.
In the dusty alleyways white linen was hung on fire escapes, and
drunks rose with their whiskey brides in piles of cardboard as princes
in relief.
An unadorned kite was released into the air. Ripe tomatoes fell into open
baskets amongst the rows.
In the rattling silence of the old room, a man guffawed into the
medicine cabinet, tossing lusterless pearls into a black bag.
A stitch was cast on, and down the street, a body danced
with orange limbs, while the blind man with his white pole nodded
secretly to the unseen ballet.
Miss Abigail dug her heels into Spanish sand. The young boy wrapped
his tooth, and placed it underneath his pillow to awake in the morning
with proffer plates equaling the national debt.
Planes exhaled vapor trails. The canal was dug with frenzied
shovels while monks prepared soil beds for the worms.
From that time, the seas heard the low bellows of whales
through the schoolhouses of silver-bellied fish – and cashiers in red smocks
smiling in the fluorescence. Then, in the field, golden-lit, stoic, Rilke
let the apple skins crack while Eve undressed, and told me that it
was night.
Quiet, arrhythmic mouths; – Fists, place them back in their paternal pockets and
forget the ridges of his jaw; –carved wrists and synthetic accordions, –her breath
and fingers, –remember this; –Blood and synapses, quell slowly and place yourselves
against his bleached temples.
For since he has gone, –oh! the red valves forgetting themselves, and
the murmuring dirt! —it’s a respite! and the Mother, the Saint who fashions
the bodies beneath the ground, will hold the answers to questions
we would never think to ask.